Today's trivia is on the subject of Raoul's parents: he mentions them in the film, therefore in this version, they are very much alive. Also, the titles of Count (Comte) and Viscount (Vicomte) are different (although the son of a Count could be styled Viscount as a 'courtesy title' until he inherited the actual title from his father). Under Napoleonic rule, the old regulations were changed, and titles were distributed in mind-bogglingly confusing ways: the title of Count was often given for some military or political achievements, as in the case of General Palikao, for example. In my version, Raoul's father is a Count by virtue of political successes, and his hereditary title of Viscount gets passed on to Raoul. Nothing like some randomly irrelevant information to brighten your day, huh?

Thanks so much for reviewing, everyone! Please do continue; given the rate at which this story is taking over my life, I desperately need some justification for all that time spent writing!

I hope you guys caught the hint in the last chapter. Well, two hints really: Erik has been jumping to some pretty rash, if logical, conclusions about the de Chagny residence (it is not Christine's house and Madame Giry certainly did not send him to the architect's office to build it!), and Christine's brilliant idea to rejoin the ballet was not so brilliant after all, if the Comtesse has anything to say on the subject. ;)

Anyway, that's enough from me. On with the story!

Chapter 6 – Outside, Looking In

Erik chose a narrow ornamental balcony that faced the courtyard, barely wide enough to stand on. The night was nearly moonless, with only a sliver of white among the stars, and that suited him very well indeed. In the courtyard there were no lamps, and the few lighted windows that surrounded him now served only to cast a faint golden sheen on the wall of the apartment block and the cobblestones below, two floors of vertical nothing. He gave the door a light push to check the hinges. It inched forward soundlessly, the broken latch detaching itself from the inside wall. Erik remained on the balcony, the lasso in his hand. His black cloak merged with shadow.

He revelled in the familiar sense of peace in this darkness, in this stillness of expectant death. Here, he was the master of every small movement in the shadows, of the music of other lives, of their deceptive rhythm. Here it was he who decided who lived and who died, and how, and why. He was home again. The previous weeks seemed to him like a nightmare of running through water, spending all his strength in a futile fight against the pull of the tide, a foolish, pointless escape. Without warning he found a memory of many years ago: a child's confused recall of discovering the canals beneath the Opéra. The water had shocked him, the strange, cold embrace that met his fall, and the inexorable drag of the current, down, down into forever. But when he had given up fighting that current, it deposited him on the side of the great lake, the beautiful space where sound was perfectly formed and where he had at last found a home.

Madame Giry had given him that home. She had made him the Phantom. It was she who had turned a blind eye to the lessons with Christine, she who had given Christine his roses, as though she had hoped a little virgin sacrifice could save him. She had not protected Christine from his corrupting touch. The sin was hers.

And now, she wanted him to pay for it, to rebuild a life she herself had helped him steal from Christine. The de Chagny residence. Through his suffering, she thought to save herself. But he would not let her.

There was a movement inside the room, and a candle flickered alight. Erik's fingers coiled around the lasso.

It was her.

Madame Giry strode over to the polished table and set the candle down. It made the room glow with a warm half-light, like a stage-set for a dream.

Erik watched silently from behind the dark window as she sat at the empty table, directly opposite so that her face was turned towards him. He knew she could not see him, but the candle was between them and he was not certain he could get a good angle without spilling it and starting a fire. He did not want another fire.

So he watched her. She looked at the flame for a while, and then down at her hands. She unbuttoned her gloves and pulled them off, one by one, then held up her hands to the light, inspecting them. Erik could not read her expression, but even so near the glare of the candle, he could see clearly what she was looking at: her hands were reddened to the wrist, the skin dry and cracked in places. Confused for a moment, he recalled her hands when she had given him the architect's card – they had not been red then.

She stood up and walked away, leaving the stage empty for a long time. Erik waited in the darkness with his legs pressing back against the railing of the balcony, without moving. A droplet of wax rolled down the candle and froze there, tear-like.

When Madame Giry returned, she was carrying a steaming teacup, and something in a jar of dark brown glass. She sat again, and this time Erik noticed the way she caught her breath slightly, as though the movement pained her back, but no pain crossed her face. She opened the jar and rubbed the contents on her hands in brisk movements; it had to be wool fat or a similar ointment, Erik decided. A moment later the jar was put aside and she was calmly sipping the tea. It had to be tea, because he would have smelled the coffee from where he stood.

The candle grew shorter. He knew now, without quite being able to shape the thought to himself, that the candle was not an obstacle. That it had never been an obstacle. Yet he watched the candle, and the teacup going up and down behind it, in a movement like water in an underground lake. Another minute. He thought again of the de Chagny residence. The elevation of the façade. The rope in his fingers seemed to have gone slippery; he felt suddenly it was a living thing, a serpent of hell sent down to tempt him.

No. It was the woman who was the serpent. She had tricked him with a promise of life and delivered suffering. She had to die.

The rope moved.

One flick of his wrist to open the door. Another to free himself of the serpent.

Madame Giry left the room again. Erik felt beads of sweat form cold on his forehead, soaking his linen mask on one side. It frightened him; he did not remember it ever happening before. A droplet crawled unbearably down his neck, into the collar of his shirt. The candle wept another drop of wax.

A shame, Louise Gandon spoke in his mind. But it was for a good cause.

No. That was a lie, a pretty lie he would not tell himself. This was death, and he was the cause. The rope was in his hand.

He touched the door. It swung inward a fraction, stirring the open curtain with a breath of night air. Nothing else moved. He waited.

He heard the approaching footsteps and raised the rope.

There would be only one chance to get this right. Noiseless and quick, with no chance to scream. He felt the coil of the noose against his thumb.

Absurdly, he thought of her red, chapped hands. A girl in a patched ballet frock, holding out her hand.

A serpent.

A serpent with broken hands.

He moved his shoulder to get the cloak out of the way, and got ready.

The rope slipped.

Erik made a grab for it but it was too late, the lasso slithered down over the side of the tiny balcony, uncoiling with lightning speed, plunging down. In a split second he knew it would hit the cobbles and the noise would be enough to startle his prey and it would be too late, too late...

He caught the very end. The rope dangled, swinging in the windless night. It had not touched the ground.

Erik stared down at it. Never before had the lasso failed him in this way, slid uselessly out of his grasp just as he was about to strike, an accident...

He stopped.

He thought of a rope swinging like this, with a man's corpse for a pendulum. Back and forth across the stage. "An accident!" the managers of the Opéra Populaire had shrieked, while everyone ran in terror. "Simply an accident!"

But they had known then, just as he knew now: there were no accidents.

He had dropped the rope. He had dropped it deliberately, with a tiny change of pressure from his thumb. He had made it fall. Because... In his mind he saw a body swinging back and forth across the stage while he held the rope in his fist, like a grotesque puppet show. Only this time, the corpse was that of a girl in a ballet frock.

He heard the footsteps again through the gap in the door, and held himself very still, turning his eyes back to the room.

And then he did drop the rope.

Madame Giry was back at the table. Next to her sat Christine.

o o o

"What was that?" Christine said, startled by the noise. "Something in the yard?"

Madame Giry shrugged. "More food for strays, no doubt. Our piano-haters downstairs may not think much of ballerinas but they are certainly fond of dogs, to be throwing them bones and bread every night. "

Christine gave a wry smile in appreciation of Madame Giry's attempt at smalltalk, but made no reply. She picked up her teacup, but did not drink. Then she set it down again.

"Is Meg asleep?"

"Yes, my dear. It is well after midnight."

Christine nodded. She felt Madame Giry watching her, knowing that she was expecting an account of the ball, but all Christine could see was the open jewellery box with the diamond staring back at her like an accusation she could not refute. She felt wound up and angry, her insides compressed into a tangle of hatred, and she could not say why or at whom. A childish, vicious part of her whispered that it was Raoul's fault, that if only he had not spoiled the night with that ring, everything would have been fine. It felt like he had picked at a wound she had been trying so hard to heal, and made it bleed.

And yet it was not Raoul she was angry with. He thought her an angel, pure as her voice. He could not know his Little Lotte was a demon-child, a beautiful creature with a rotting soul, who took his ring and gave it to another, and who could not regret it.

"I am very tired, Madame Giry. Forgive me, I think I will go to bed. May I leave it until tomorrow to tell you both about the ball?"

"Of course, child."

Christine forced herself to rise slowly from her seat, to stand patiently while Madame Giry loosened the lacing at the back of her corset, and then to walk sedately back to her bedroom. She felt Madame Giry's eyes on her the whole way, even after she had rounded the corner into the corridor, and she knew she was behaving strangely but it was beyond her power to stop it. The shameful anger inside her felt like a fireworks charge, a single wrong movement could spark it and then she would explode. She walked.

o o o

Christine. Here. Not at the de Chagny residence, not with the Vicomte, not anywhere else but here. Here at night. Living here. Living here, with Madame Giry.

Erik found he could not move, could not do the only thing he had to do: scale down the wall and fly like the night itself, back to the cab he had hired with its silent, paid-off driver, back to Montmartre and the anonymity of his room above the store. Instead he stood like an effigy of himself, a black shell that contained he knew not what.

Christine was here. Christine was talking to Madame Giry. They were drinking tea. He had come here to kill the woman Christine was talking to. Christine would have found him here with the corpse, another, another corpse – and it would have been the end, of everything.

The rope had slipped. He had dropped it himself.

Erik felt a sickening burning in the pit of his stomach. He had been walking blindfolded to the edge of an abyss, and now the blindfold had fallen along with the rope, and he saw the drop into Hell.

He also saw Christine turn as Madame Giry did something to her dress that made it loosen and slip dangerously, and realised that against all reason, Hell could actually get worse.

He had to leave. He had to find himself again, somehow, find Christine's ring and think of that, think of her ring, not of the rope that lay coiled like a dead serpent under the wall, not of the slipping dress. He had to think of the ring and not of the fact that Christine was here, and the de Chagny residence... The Devil take the de Chagny residence. He could not understand it and did not want to. His mind was full of Christine.

A candle flickered behind the window to his right.

Erik looked at it.

It was another mirror, and once again he could be behind it.

It was madness.

It was very close; the walls were thin. He could touch the windowsill. Just one glimpse.

He was entirely still, without even a tremor of his hands or a movement of his eyes. He could not allow himself to do this. Having come so close, having finally come face to face with his own dark reflection and shattered that mirror, he could not, he could not, he could not dare to take on that role again. No mirrors. No music. Above all, no Christine.

He had to go back to Montmartre and learn to be a man, the man Christine had created or found or woken with her kiss. It was that or death or insanity, or very possibly all three, but here, with one temptation taking the form of another, he would be lost forever.

The candle went out, and the window turned dark.

Erik realised slowly that he was numb and probably bruised from standing in this awkward position, that his face itched abominably under the sweat-dampened mask, and finally that he was, in fact, standing on an ornamental balcony barely wide enough for a flower-pot, and had been there for the better part of the night.

He had to flee.

Then the window opened, and he saw Christine. She leaned out on her elbows, looked down, perhaps looking for the stray dogs.

Then she saw him.